


the silent universe

by ravens_writes



Category: Original Work
Genre: Fiction, Original work - Freeform, Silence, a universe with no sound
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-09-24 09:35:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17098112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravens_writes/pseuds/ravens_writes
Summary: There is a universe where sound doesn’t exist.No one knows why. No one cares to know why, or even has a feeling that something isn’t quite right.But there is. There's something wrong with this world and there always will be.





	the silent universe

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this this past summer for a writing workshop hosted by my ex-English teacher.  
> ...I don't really know what I was thinking when I wrote this. There are bound to be mistakes and plot holes, so I apologize in advance. I kind of rushed it at the end because I was cramming for time, so there's that too.  
> All that aside, I hope you like it!  
> here we go:

There is a universe where sound doesn’t exist.

No one knows why. No one cares to know why, or even has a feeling that something isn’t quite right.

But there is. There's something wrong with this world and there always will be.

———

In a town called December there is a girl of fourteen summers. Her name is Alice.

Alice is a seemingly ordinary girl. Brown hair, blue eyes, a spattering of freckles across her nose. She lives an ordinary life, in an ordinary town, and has an ordinary family and ordinary friends.

Everybody around Alice seems perfectly normal. Although there is a little diversity, everyone leads similar lives, with all the same ideas going into what makes them them.

But.

There is one single person in the whole of December who is different.

Alice.

———

Alice is different from everyone else for one reason.

She remembers.

She remembers a past life, although she doesn’t know that’s what it is.

And her memories get twisted and warped and wrought into vibrant, colorful dreams that are similar to other people’s dreams but for one thing.

Alice’s dreams are of noise. She dreams of various things, but the most common is of people making strange shapes with their mouths and something coming out.

_Sound._

Alice can hear.

———

It starts out as small details in her dreams.

Wind rustling the leaves. A dog barking. Rain drumming on the roof.

But soon she hears snippets of noise outside of her sleep.

Wind blowing her hair around her face. Her neighbor’s dog growling at a squirrel. Rain pit-pattering on her head.

Alice doesn’t quite know what to make of this new development.

She is a little scared, because this has never happened to her before. She is also intrigued, because this has never happened to her before.

And for the first time in her life, Alice starts questioning the world as she knows it.

_Was it always like this?_

_Are there other people like me?_

_What in the world is going on?_

And the question that resonates the most inside her head:

_Why me?_

———

Two weeks later, Alice tosses and turns in bed with the same questions swirling around in her head, but she is no closer to answering them than she was two weeks prior.

Then, as she finally drifts off to sleep, Alice has another dream for the first time in fourteen days. But this time, it’s different. Where before there were cities teeming with machines and people alike, now there is a snow-capped mountain.

Wind howling in her ears, she sees a small brown speck—no, a hut—on the side of the mountain. Through the flap in the side that she assumes serves as a door, Alice catches sight of a figure. A woman.

She’s important, whoever she is. Alice can feel it.

But just as she tries to get a closer look, Alice jolts awake.

———

Alice goes to school the next day. But she can’t pay attention, because the woman on the mountain is all that fills her thoughts.

Tomorrow is Saturday, Alice tells herself. (Not out loud, of course. Nobody in the world knows how to speak.) Tomorrow, you can think about whatever you want. Tomorrow, you can _do_ whatever you want. But today, you have to pay attention.

Her mind ignores itself and becomes fixated on the mountain. Alice resigns herself to six and a half hours of wonderings.

———

When Alice comes home, her mom notices she has her head in the clouds. _What’s wrong?_ she asks Alice using sign language—the only language, really.

 _Nothing,_ Alice replies, rolling her eyes.

Her mother clearly doesn’t buy it—Alice’s mind wanders often—but she dismisses it as an Alice-esque thing. She rolls her eyes in response.

Alice makes a face and goes upstairs to her room.

She tries to distract herself by reading one of her books, but quickly loses interest.

She tries watching one of her favorite movies. That doesn’t work either.

Alice sighs (silently, of course). What to do?

She decides to sleep. Maybe she’ll have another dream.

———

Alice was right. She dreams again, but the dream is not what she hoped for.

She sees a girl a few years older—maybe five?—than she is. She looks familiar, even though Alice can’t see her front.

But then the girl turns around. Alice’s jaw drops. The girl is a dead look-alike for an older Alice, down to the ring of emerald green around the edge of her irises. She is wearing a red dress with her hair in some fancy updo that Alice doesn’t know the name of.

The girl sits down at a table, and then Alice realizes where she is. _The hut on the mountain!_ She recognizes a painting on a wall that she saw the first time she dreamed about the mountain.

She must be the person I saw, she realizes.

But Alice is so caught up in her thoughts that she doesn’t pay attention to what the girl is doing until it’s almost too late. It’s only when the girl stands up and leaves the room that Alice notices what’s on the table.

A couple of books, placed so Alice can’t see the spines.

Three scrolls, one of them unrolled. It has a drawing on it, a good one. Alice realizes that the girl must have been the artist of the painting.

The drawing features a girl with brown hair. A monkey is perched on her shoulder. The girl wears black pants, black combat boots, and a black jacket. The only spot of color is the collar of a red shirt peeking out at the neckline of her jacket.

She stands facing a city, her back to the viewer. The skyline looks awfully familiar, Alice realizes. (Alice is realizing lots of things lately.) The pieces click into place and suddenly the city is December. Alice smiles at the idea of home, but her smile is wiped off her face when—is that _fire?_

Alice’s city is burning.

Thank goodness it’s only a dream, Alice thinks.

The girl comes back, and Alice shrinks back, feeling guilty of prying into other people’s business. But then the girl starts to sing. Her voice is unlike one Alice has ever heard before. Instead of being muffled and dull like voices usually are in Alice’s dreams, the girl’s voice is clear and bright, and it gives the impression of a wind chime, although Alice doesn’t really know what that is. The girl stops singing and the scroll is _glowing._ The girl on the scroll turns around to look at the girl in the red dress, waves, and starts walking towards the city.

Magic.

_Whoa._

The girl in the red dress turns to look at Alice, who up until then didn’t know she was visible.

“My name is Adelaide,” she says. “I am the keeper of sound. You must bring sound back to the world before all noise is forgotten forever.” Huh. Apparently there _had_ been sound in this world at one point.

_How can she see me?_

Adelaide can apparently hear Alice’s thoughts. “Magic,” she says.

_How can I bring sound back? What if I can’t?_

“Find all the clues I’ve given you,” Adelaide says. “You can do it, Alice. I trust you completely.”

_How do you know my name?_

“I am you. The Alice from the past.”

———

To be continued...

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed!  
> Bug out!  
> ~Azulie
> 
> Tumblr: xthreeravensx
> 
> Kudos and comments are always always always appreciated.
> 
> edit: chapter 2 is on its way!


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